The Government has agreed that dredging should go ahead, but two villages have
remained dry thanks to an experiment to slow local rivers

As sodden Somerset watched the rain slashing down yet again yesterday, soldiers standing by in case of even greater floods, one officially designated high-risk area remained unconcerned. The villages of Bossington and Allerford in the north of the county would normally have been expected to flood long ago, but have so far remained dry.

Their escape follows experimental work to slow the rivers that run through them. Carried out upstream last summer by the Government, the Environment Agency and the National Trust, these measures involved installing leaky wooden dams to flood fields, blocking ditches, and sinking 150 ponds to catch the water. A full report awaits the spring, but they seem to have reduced the spate by a satisfactorily sufficient 15 per cent.

Such interventions are now increasingly being touted as the best solution to the regular flooding of the Somerset Levels. Twenty-five square miles of their farmland – enough to encompass any of the world’s five smallest countries – have been inundated for a month as water has built up around the silted channels of the rivers Parrett and Tone.

Forty homes have been flooded, and the 200-strong village of Muchelney has become an island. It may be about to get worse. More deluges are expected this weekend, while unusually high tides will back more water up the rivers.

Dr Jean Venables, chief executive of the Association of Drainage Authorities, this week called it an avoidable disaster, caused by “a 20-year backlog of inactivity” over dredging the rivers. Certainly, it was both foreseeable and foreseen.

Ten months ago, Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, told a parliamentary committee that he had been informed of the situation “on many occasions” and was “fully aware” of the problem; yet he did not go to look until last weekend. Lord Smith, chairman of the Environment Agency, did visit the levels more than a year ago, and pledged to dredge “pinch points” on the rivers. But this did not start until October and had to be abandoned when the floods began.

Local people are understandably angry to have been ignored for so long, resent paying drainage rates for so little purpose, and are incandescent that the agency spent millions creating a wildlife reserve – as it was obliged to do – as part of a scheme to strengthen coastal flood defences nearby. They almost unanimously blame it for failing to dredge after taking over responsibility for the rivers in the Nineties.

But their rage is too narrowly focused. True, dredging went out of fashion about then, as the postwar drive to maximise land under the plough disappeared. But the agency has had to obey the insistence of successive governments that flood protection measures should concentrate on the towns and cities where most people live.

Action has also been blocked by strict cost/benefit rules. Whereas flood defences normally bring benefits that are eight times their costs, the agency says that those that come from dredging on the Levels work out at 10 times less, disqualifying them from consideration.

Then, the Coalition has reduced capital expenditure on defences since coming to power and is slashing the Agency’s maintenance budget, used for keeping rivers clear, by nearly half. Dr Venables says that the Somerset crisis is just the first result of all this, and roundly blames Whitehall and Westminster, not the agency, for it.

This week, however, the politics of flooding overrode its economics, as David Cameron announced that dredging should take place after all. But it’s still not clear who will pay the £4 million cost. Mr Paterson has refused to stump up any of it. The agency reckons that, under the accountancy rules it has to observe, it can only provide £400,000. It hopes to raise another £900,000 from local councils, but then there’d still be two thirds of the cash to find.

Everyone from local farmers to wildlife groups now agrees that dredging should take place, but they widely differ on its effectiveness. Dr Venables reckons it will have a radical effect; the agency – backed by substantial independent expert opinion – insists it will be marginal. At any rate, it will have to be done with care to avoid causing flooding in Taunton and Bridgwater downstream, and it will have to continue, if silt from the sea and intensely farmed land upstream is not to clog up the channels again.

It is also essential to cut down the amount of water going into the rivers in the first place. A tidal sluice would help reduce influx from the sea.

But there’s growing agreement that – as Mr Paterson, apparently a recent convert, says – the need is “to hold water back further up in the hills” and let it “soak into the ground”. No wonder the experiment in North Somerset is gaining traction.

Plastic is the buzzword for a bee with a place to call home

We’ve long known, of course, that bees are wonderfully eco-friendly creatures, but it now seems that they are even more virtuous than supposed. For new research shows that, like true greens, they get a buzz out of recycling plastic.

Scientists at York University and the University of Guelph – both in Ontario, Canada – report that two species seek out the environmental scourge when building their nests, becoming the first insects ever known to do so.

The researchers found that alfafa leafcutter bees (Megachile rotundata), a species imported from Europe, incorporated shreds of plastic bags for, on average, about a quarter of their construction materials – while the Canadian Megachile campanulae, which is partial to pine resin, went for polyurethane-based sealants used on building exteriors.

Nor does resorting to plastics seem to be their – wait for it – Plan B. The study, published in the current issue of Ecosphere, adds that they go for it even when natural materials are around, suggesting that they actively choose it.

And they may know what they are doing. Bees that nested in plastic straws have been found to be free of parasites.

Now there’s a nice sting in the tail.

The Iveragh peninsula has been ranked as one of only three 'gold tier' dark-sky reserves

Dark skies herald a bright future for Kerry peninsula

You’ve heard of darkest Africa, but what about Ireland? This week 270sq miles (700sq km) of south-west Kerry have been officially designated as one of the most sombre places on the planet – to its inhabitants’ delight.

The Iveragh peninsula, home to some 4,000 people, has been ranked alongside part of the Namibian desert and the heart of New Zealand’s South Island as one of only three “gold tier” dark-sky reserves where “the full array of visible sky phenomena can be viewed”.

It is the first such area in the Northern hemisphere, though the Brecon Beacons, Exmoor and Northumberland have achieved lesser accreditation from the International Dark-Sky Association.

Its secret is to be sandwiched between the Atlantic and the Kerry mountains, which block light pollution from the rest of Ireland. It has never experienced industrial development and even the pubs, hotels and restaurants that service the short summer tourist season tend to close in winter.

Now, residents aim to attract winter “astrotourists”, and hope to establish a small galaxy of observatories. And the county council is to replace street lights with ones that shine only downwards, thus saving energy and money while doing its bit to keep Kerry in the dark.